Golden
by ashlice
Summary: She's still a golden girl. Her eyes dance, her smile is sparkling, and her laugh is infectious, even if it did sound like a four year old's. She'd fallen from grace and he hadn't forgiven her for it until this very moment. - Set at the end of 6x05. DS. One-shot.


**A/N - I stopped being a real fan of this show after season four. I've been a casual viewer lately simply for Dan and Serena, even though they have not been together for a while. Monday night's episode ended beautifully and this one-shot is inspired by the chorus of the song that was playing in the background during that scene, which is Thinking About You by Frank Ocean. Takes place from right when the credits started to roll.****  
**

**_'Cause I've been thinkin' about forever._**

She's still a golden girl. Her eyes dance, her smile is sparkling, and her laugh is infectious, even if it did sound like a four year old's. She'd fallen from grace and he hadn't forgiven her for it until this very moment.

"I was so angry with you for so long." He says without even stopping to think about his words. She puts down her fork, swallows the piece of Boston cream pie she had in her mouth. The golden mane that always matched everything about her perfectly was coming undone from its braid. More and more strands were falling onto her bare shoulders, a sign that they'd been sitting in that restaurant for quite a few hours.

"I did a horrible thing. I thought it was the right thing at the time. It wasn't." She shrugs her shoulders as if to say that there was nothing more she could say or do.

He shakes his head. "I'm not talking about our home movie. I'm talking about two years ago. You and I considered getting back together, but decided to hold off."

"Sink or swim." She says quietly, not breaking their eye contact.

"You didn't let us swim, Serena. All of a sudden, you were caught up in this whole new whirlwind romance, when for months all I was trying to do was be with you. And I was angry, even though I knew you needed to take that path. So I'm sorry that I fell in love with someone else. I'm sorry that I didn't wait around like you probably expected me to." He pauses, giving her a chance to respond.

Serena van der Woodsen bites down on her bottom lip, a nervous habit that he used to find adorable.

"_There is no 'us', Serena."_

"Dan, when I told you that I loved you at Blair's wedding, you didn't react. You never said one word to me about it. I was devastated. You told my best friend that you loved her, instead. I wanted to disappear. I didn't want to feel what I was feeling." Now she pauses, waits for him to say something.

"_I did it because I love you, Dan."_

Dan Humphrey looks down at his plate and is silent for a long time. If he's bothered by the fact that she didn't say anything in regards to letting him just wait for her, he doesn't show it. Finally, he loosens his tie and then looks back up at her.

"I guess we both should learn not to hide our feelings anymore." He says.

"We didn't use to, once upon a time. We used to be happy. We used to be good people." Her voice breaks slightly on the last sentence and he doesn't think she's ever sounded sadder. All of a sudden, he's truly sorry for everything. Not sarcastically sorry, not new-asshole-author-Dan sorry. He's just sorry.

"_I told my mom that you and I are forever. I know I was right."_

He had thought Serena was forever. For years, he couldn't see a future for him without her in it. Looking at her now, as she absentmindedly stirred her milkshake, lost in her own thoughts, she still looked like forever. For the first time since his attention shifted to her petite, brunette former best friend, Serena looked like the Serena that he fell in love with.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" She sounds genuinely confused, and Dan can't help but find it very cute. He smiles at her, and she crinkles her nose appreciatively, laughing. All the sadness from the previous moment has dispersed, and she is golden again.

"_I love you because you make no excuses for who you are."_

"Am I not allowed to look at you?" He asks, feigning innocence. Her response throws him.

"You're looking at me as if you haven't seen me for a long time." It's a thoughtful observation, but it's also a loaded one. It's an honest one. She sounds almost curious.

"I feel like I haven't." he admits.

"Do you still love Blair?"

He can't believe that she's asking him that, but it's the first time that anyone actually has. He's so tired of people telling him how he feels. The fact that someone finally asked for a change makes him feel a little lighter.

"I don't know. I don't know if I'm just still hurt and angry over the way it ended or if I actually still love her. I know that she never loved me though. I wasn't who I used to be when I was with her. I was different. I wasn't the same Dan…" he trails off, not knowing how to explain himself.

"The same Dan who loved me." She finishes his sentence bravely. He realizes that she's right.

"Yeah."

"Which Dan do you like better?" It's asked so casually, as if she were asking him his favorite color.

"I've had too many personalities in the last few years to really know how to answer that. The person I was with you is someone that I looked down upon for being naïve. But I think he just saw things differently. He saw you differently."

"He didn't see a mess. But now you do. Now you can see me in my crowning glory. Look at me, I'm just a mess." She sounds defeated and all he wants is to rewind to a few minutes earlier when she was laughing.

"You're beautiful." The words tumble out of his mouth. It feels like he hears them outside of his own body, like it wasn't really him that said them. But he knows that he said it, because that's what he'd been thinking.

"_She's not the same beautiful teenage girl that you saw at a party. She's a troubled young woman."_

But as her eyes light up, and she bites her bottom lip for about the hundredth time that night, she looks like that girl again. She's beautiful again. And it's dangerous.

"Thank you." She says, finally.

"Why don't I get you home?" he asks her, while taking some bills out of his wallet and putting them down on the check. He glances up at her again only to see that she looks very uncomfortable. "What's wrong? I don't mind paying Serena, it doesn't have to be a big—"

Serena shakes her head. "That rambling when you're nervous habit still hasn't gone away, huh?" She's smiling again, but it's a sad one. "It's not the check. I don't think I really have a home to go to right now. I was staying with Steven."

"Oh." Dan leans back in his chair, contemplating a solution before he realizes that he's in the same boat. "I was staying in your old room, at Blair's. But tonight she told me that she'd rather be alone than be with me."

"Ouch." She sounds like she means it. He shrugs.

"I've heard and said worse."

"_I don't know who you are anymore."_

"I know where to go." She says, practically running for the door. By the time he catches up to her, she's already hailed a cab and is getting inside.

"Where are you going?" He asks, starting to panic about whether or not he'd be sleeping on a park bench that night.

"Get in!" She says. "I already told the driver where to go."

He climbs in beside her, completely bewildered. She, on the other hand, sounded exhilarated. "How about you tell _me _where we're going?"

She doesn't answer him, but instead leans her head back against the seat and closes her eyes. They're in the cab for a long time before Dan realizes that they're heading outside of the city.

"Why are we in downtown Brooklyn?" He asks her after he's tired of containing his many questions.

"Here is good, thank you." She says to the driver. He stops the car as Serena pulls out her wallet, handing the driver her credit card. She practically bounces out of the cab. He is beyond tired and seriously contemplating going to sleep on a bench that he can see in the distance.

"Serena, why are we here?" He's standing in front of the boardwalk to Brighton Beach. She's already taken her heels off and is running up the stairs. He rushes after her, grateful that the place is so deserted.

"Well, being homeless, I figured that the beach was the best place to go to sleep. I prefer the Hamptons, but frankly, you look too tired for that." Her eyes are laughing at him, daring him to make fun of her spontaneity.

"Serena, someone got shot here last summer. We should go." He tries not to sound so deadpan as he reaches for her arm to pull her back towards the steps, but instead she pulls it away from him and walks towards the sand.

"But we have nowhere to go."

"No, I have nowhere to go. You can go stay at your mom's, or get a room for the night, or—"

"But I don't want to. I want to stay here, with you." The wind is stronger here by the water, and it's pretty much undone her whole braid. The mane is free and flowing, and her eyes are no longer laughing at him. They're begging him to stay.

"Why? We've been nothing but horrible to each other since you got back. And I wasn't exactly very nice to you before that either." He's confused as to why she suddenly wants to spend the night here when she could have a comfortable bed anywhere else away from him.

"Because you're not being horrible right now. You're being Dan. So why can't we just be nostalgic for one night? Why can't we be dangerous and talk about something that we just keep ignoring?" She sounds close to tears now and he's only beginning to understand how much he's hurt, how much he pushed her to become someone he didn't recognize. "We slept under the stars one night." She reminds him.

"_I've been thinking about you all summer."_

This wasn't the Hamptons, and he hadn't been pining for her for an entire summer. He wasn't seventeen anymore and neither was she. She stood before him, a beautiful young woman of twenty-one. She's hurt and asking him to just let her have this. After everything, how could he deny her a little nostalgia? They sit down quietly, side by side, in front of the water.

For the first time in four years, Dan Humphrey thought about forever. For the first time since he lost himself, Dan wondered if forever was sitting right next to him.


End file.
